E-filings of ITR surge 27% to 3.09 crore during Apr-Dec

With the Income Tax Department taking a host of technology based measures, e-filing of returns witnessed a jump of 27.22 per cent in the nine months up to December of the current fiscal.
A total of 3.09 crore returns were electronically filed during April to December period as against 2.43 crore in the comparable period last year, the latest figures available from the Income-Tax Department showed.
In the 2014-15 financial year, a total of 3.41 crore returns were filed electronically.
The new e-filing system, operationalised last year, allows online verification of a person's ITR (Income Tax Return), thereby ending the practice of sending paper acknowledgment to the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) of the IT department located in Bengaluru.

The department recently included bank account and demat account details among the modes that can be used to generate code to e-verify ITRs.
The ITR could also be e-verified by using Internet banking, email or an Aadhaar number-generated One Time Password.

There were about 52.12 lakh ITRs were e-verified, as per the latest available data.
The Aadhaar database is also being used by the taxman to verify taxpayers' credentials. As per the latest data, there were 40,34,880 Aadhaar-PAN linked returns.
The department initiated these new technology-based measures in order to fully automate the e-filing system and also to end taxpayers' grievances with regard to their ITR-V not reaching by post which led to their returns getting rejected.

E-filing offers convenience of time and place to tax payers. This facility is available round the clock and returns can be filed from any place in the world.